What Tucker Carlson Said About Alexei Navalny and Putin Killing People
Tucker Carlson’s latest defense of authoritarianism has already come back to haunt him.
Just days before Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison, the ousted Fox News host was making excuses for Vladimir Putin’s political assassinations.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, Carlson, newly returned from his trip to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin and pick up groceries, defended his softball questions for the Russian president.
As Egyptian journalist Emad El Din Adeeb pointed out, Carlson did not use the interview to address the Russian regime’s imprisonment of journalists, restrictions on speech, or the persecution of Navalny.
“[I] have concluded the following: that every leader kills people–including my leader. Some kill more than others,” Carlson replied. “Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”
Q: In your interview with Putin, you didn’t talk about freedom of speech in Russia, you did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations
— Media Matters (@mmfa) February 16, 2024
Tucker Carlson: Leadership requires killing peoplehttps://t.co/sVhsX52ynP pic.twitter.com/wUjoVTkpR9
Navalny died Friday at 47 after three years in prison, not even one week after Carlson’s relativizing excuse.